Gimme a break, fella! I, for one, do not believe that a spouse who works and contributes to the education of the other spouse during marriage normally does so in the expectation of compensation. Spouses simply work together, in both income and non-income producing ways, in their joint, mutual and individual interests. If the marriage fails, the supporting spouse's consequent loss of expectation by itself is no more compensable than that of having invested a portion of her life, youth, energy and labor in a failed marriage.

Furthermore, it is almost impossible to predict what amount of enhanced earnings, if any, will result from a professional education. The degree of financial success attained by those holding a professional degree varies greatly. Some, even, may earn less from their professional practices than they could have earned from non-professional work. Moreover, others, due to choice or factors beyond their control, may never practice their professions.

So, there you have it - the degrees of the closet - or "outness" - if you like. It is controversial whether outing a gay person is beneficial to the society and/or that person himself. Personally I think it does not make sense to out plain folk people, while it does to out public figures/people in authority.

Usually, the outed gay individual would go after a journalist and his newspaper who outed him. But even such lawsuits have proved unsuccessful in the long run. Here it is the Cruise's case with South Park:

Quote

The relevant "South Park" episode -- entitled "Trapped in the Closet" -- self-consciously skirts the outermost edges of the First Amendment's protection for parody. A court would probably deem it constitutionally protected, but only barely. Defamation requires a "statement of fact" -- and for this reason, most parody, because of its fictional nature, falls outside defamation law by definition.

But this is the rare parody that, fairly read, does make a statement of fact. In the episode, the animated version of Cruise literally goes into a closet, and won't come out. Other characters beg him to "come out of the closet," including the animated version of his ex-wife, Nicole Kidman. The Kidman character promises Cruise that if he comes out of the closet, neither she nor "Katie" will judge him. But the Cruise character claims he isn't "in the closet," even though he plainly is. No one could miss that the episode's creators are taking a stance and making a statement -- that the real Cruise is gay and hiding it.

The use of the euphemism "in the closet" -- used to refer to someone who is homosexual but who has not admitted his or her homosexuality to friends, family, or the public -- is transparent. Interestingly, the episode itself indicates that its creators know well that they may be defaming Cruise, and they know of his litigious history. The joke disclaimer preceding the episode announces that "All characters and events on this show -- even those based on real persons -- are entirely fictional."

At the end of the episode, the Cruise character threatens to bring a suit (not on the gay issue, but in defense of Scientology) "in England" -- which lacks a formal equivalent of the First Amendment. And all the credits at the end use the pseudonyms "John Smith" and "Jane Smith." Since the episode does indeed make a "statement of fact," the parody exception to defamation law won't save "South Park." Thus, the creators' only weapon against a possible suit by Cruise is a First Amendment defense. Fortunately for them, the Supreme Court has interpreted the defense very broadly.

[...] It's one thing to co-opt part of a song, or use a trademark, in a parody: Without using part of the original, the parody won't work at all; no one will know what its target is. But it's another thing to embed what would otherwise be a defamatory statement in a work of fiction: This is defamation in satire's clothing, and it's only in order to protect true satire that that the Constitution has been held to also protect this lesser creature. Generally, courts don't want to get into the business of picking out nuggets of fact from an otherwise fictional account. The upshot, though -- and courts know this, and accept this cost in the service of free speech -- is that parody and satire inevitably may become a refuge for rogues who seek to defame without liability. That seems to me to be just what's happening with respect to the "South Park" episode.

I'm not sure I understand the "statement of fact" thing stressed upon by the lawyer here - SP maintains that the whole thing is a parody, characters are all fictional - everything seems OK, with the FA protection in mind.

I mean, you have tabloids (papers) claiming outright that Cruise is gay - I just don't get the overanalyzing kind of thing that the Yale lawyer is doing in the case of SP.

I think there's something in here - I mean, it's not the same as, say a singer slamming another one - the one it left me with a cheesy taste was that between the 71-years-old Etta James and Beyonce a couple of years ago 'cuz the latter sang "At Last" At Obama's Inaugural Ball -

As law student or a lawyer find out a life partner or a friend would not difficult. In general, in this commercial age find a true friend or life partner totally depend on luck. Only God can help us, so we should want help from God.

That said, as an Italian woman, having been in the States for a while, I found Craig's arrest scandalous. Not that I feel sorry for Craig, who was a hypocrite having had voted consistently against gay people's rights. After all, Craig probably considered himself to be "straight," just having a quickie with a stranger miles and miles away from home, something that hardly made him gay.

What is appalling to me is the actual arrest procedure, the kind of thing that happens everyday to gay people in this country. According to the police report, the incident began with Craig's peering into the Karsia's stall several times through the crack in the door. Then, Craig entered the stall to the left of Karsia's and placed his roller bag against the front of the stall door. Once seated, Craig tapped his right foot - a signal, according to the police report, used by people wishing to engage in lewd conduct. After Karsia moved his own foot up and down (LOL!) - Craig, moved his right foot so that it touched the side of Karsia's left foot under the stall divider. Craig also swiped his left hand under the stall 3 times before Karsia held his badge down by the floor so Craig could see it.

Now, to me, this whole story is a nightmare of out-of-control police. Craig was simply the innocent victim of a banal set-up by the MN airport police - one that Joseph Stalin would have admired. There was no sex act of any kind. The idiotic cop - who appears to spend his entire work day sitting on a toilet in smelly airport bathrooms - walks him off, provokes him, and arrests him for lewd conduct. All this for tapping his foot in a public bathroom. This is insane!

In my country - as it is also the case in other European countries - sex sting operations utilizing undercover police officers are illegal. Such an operation would be considered entrapment by the police, enough reason to drop the case per se. (Funny how these officers actually believe they are not themselves gay - to them, spending a few minutes peeking at gay men hardly makes them gay - after all, they are there to bust gay guys, not have fun with them!).

The other thing that irks me is the way the GOP tossed Craig overboard as if he were a terrorist. Even if turned out that Craig was gay, so what?! There are a lots of fine gay public servants. His party should have been rallying in his defense, not make him walk the plank. In Europe printing in media the sex stories of politicians is frowned upon - let alone taking stories of this kind to court!

Are you kidding me, Italian woman? I've never been to the States, and I can not believe they'd do this kind of thing!

I chose to post here first as it appeared to me the thread/post demanded addressing more "urgently," so to speak - they (the State's Attorneys) go by the "intent" kind of thing when charging and convicting on these kind of things - an actual sexual act is not necessary - it's enough for the person charged to have had the intent" to engage in the offence cited for - the "intent" is the element of the crime deducted/inducted from the actual method used and the way the person reacted during the encounter.

That is how they do it in the U.S., at least. Tapping the foot and then touching on the part of the arrested of the side of the foot of the [arresting officer] in a gay context constitutes enough to make the actual arrest.

[...] The "grandiosity gap" - the painful and narcissistically injurious gap between their grandiose fantasies and their dreary and humiliating reality - becomes emotionally insupportable. They decompensate and act out. [...] Unbeknownst to them, they seek self punishment. They are at heart suicidal. [...] This is called "projective identification." They attribute evil and corruption to their enemies and foes. These forms of paranoia are called projection and splitting. These are all primitive, infantile, and often persecutory, defence mechanisms.

When coupled with narcissism - the inability to empathize, the exploitativeness, the sense of entitlement, the rages, the dehumanization and devaluation of others - this mindset yields abysmal contempt for the narcissist's victims. The overriding emotion of terrorists and serial killers, the amalgam and culmination of their tortured psyche - is deep seated disdain for everything human, the flip side of envy. It is cognitive dissonance gone amok. [...] To justify this apparent contradiction, the mass murderer casts himself as an altruistic savior of a group of people "endangered" by his foes. [...]

[...] Their cosmic significance is daily sustained by newspaper headlines, ever increasing bounties, admiring copycats, successful acts of blackmail, the strength and size of their opponents, and the devastation of human life and property. Appeasement works only to aggravate their drives and strengthen their appetites by emboldening them and by raising the threshold of excitation and "narcissistic supply". Terrorists and killers are addicted to this drug of being acknowledged and reflected. They derive their sense of existence, parasitically, from the reactions of their (often captive) audience.

Erich Fromm suggested that both Hitler and Stalin were narcissistic mass murderers. Hitler and Nazism are often portrayed as an apocalyptic and seismic break with European history. Yet the truth is that they were the culmination and reification of European history in the 19th century. Europe's annals of colonialism have prepared it for the range of phenomena associated with the Nazi regime - from industrial murder to racial theories, from slave labor to the forcible annexation of territory. [...] Moreover, Nazi Germany innovated by applying prevailing racial theories (usually reserved to non-whites) to the white race itself. It started with the Jews - a non-controversial proposition - but then expanded them to include "east European" whites, such as the Poles and the Russians. Germany was not alone in its malignant nationalism. [...] Nazism - and Fascism - were world ideologies, adopted enthusiastically in places as diverse as Iraq, Egypt, Norway, Latin America, and Britain. At the end of the 1930's, liberal capitalism, communism, and fascism (and its mutations) were locked in mortal battle of ideologies. [...]

[...]

What was the role of the Jews in all this? [...] The Jews constituted a perfect, easily identifiable, reification of all that was "wrong" with Europe. They were an old nation, they were eerily disembodied (without a territory), they were cosmopolitan, they were part of the establishment, they were "decadent", they were hated on religious and socio-economic grounds, they were different, they were narcissistic (felt and acted as morally superior), they were everywhere, they were defenseless, they were credulous, they were adaptable (and thus could be co-opted to collaborate in their own destruction). They were the perfect hated father figure and parricide was in fashion.

[...]

Below it's a quote from Camus' 'Caligula' - no comment is necessary, I think.

Quote

CALIGULA: I'm not mad; in fact, I've never felt so lucid. I suddenly felt a desire for the impossible. That's all. (Pauses).Things as they are in my opinion are far from satisfactory...That's why I want the moon, or happiness, or eternal life-something, in fact that may sound crazy, but which isn't of this world...I'm exploring the impossible. ... Or, more accurately, its a question of making the impossible possible...And what's the use to me of a firm hand, what use is the amazing power that is mine, if I can't have the sun set in the east, if I can't reduce the sum of suffering and make an end to death?CAESONIA: But that's madness, sheer madness. It's wanting to be god on earth.CALIGULA: I want to drown the sky in the sea, to infuse ugliness with beauty, to wring a laugh from pain.

- Albert Camus (1965) Caligula.

GYalo - while it's true that wanting to be "God on Earth" is crazy, as Caesonia tells him, that's we do on a societal level, when dealing with the mortality issue - with the "artist on the top" orchestrating the whole thing (I think Bion says the leader is usually a man with marked paranoid trends, and if per chance, the presence of an enemy is not immediately obvious to the group, the next best thing is for the group is to choose a leader to whom it is!)

So, all the wars started and carried on for years on end, wars fought over and beyond what that financial rationale would guarantee/justify, with blood being shed 'in vain'. I can actually see here that there's a theory (called TMT) that maintains that all human behavior is mostly motivated by the fear of mortality. The theory purports to help explain human activity both at the individual and societal level.

The terror of absolute annihilation creates such a profound — albeit subconscious — anxiety in people (called cognitive dissonance) that they spend their lives attempting to make sense of it. On large scales, societies build symbols: laws, religious meaning systems, cultures, and belief systems to explain the significance of life, define what makes characteristics, skills, and talents extraordinary, reward others whom they find exemplify the desired attributes, and punish or kill others who do not adhere to their "cultural worldview."

This "cultural worldview" provides a base of making sense of the world as stable and orderly, a place where one rests their hopes on symbolic immortality (e.g., fame, having children, legacies of wealth or fortune) or literal immortality (e.g., the promise of a life in an after-world). Our cultural world view is a "symbolic protector" between the reality of life and inevitability of death. Because of this men and women strive to have their cultural worldview confirmed by others, thereby receiving the community's esteem (they reinforce each-other beliefs that things are basically OK).

However, when one's worldview is threatened by the world view of another, it often results in one's self-respect being endangered as well. In such a situation people not only endeavor to deny or devalue the importance of others' world views, but try to controvert the ideas and opinions of others which may, as a consequence, escalate into a conflict (say, religious holy wars) - with those religious viewpoints, being in essence, irrelevant in the big picture of things, since they are simply "ideas" people subscribe to.

Culture provides meaning, a kind of coherent worldview that diminishes the psychological terror caused by the knowledge of eventual death. George W. Bush's approval rating jumped almost 50% following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US. The tragedy made US citizens aware of their mortality, and Bush provided an antidote to these existential concerns by promising to bring justice to the terrorist group responsible for the attacks (albeit he waged war against Iraq too, not having much to do with the attacks, or actually having any of those WMDs).

Maybe I digress here, but I had a question - was this TMT thing mentioned by GYalo formulated after the 9/11 events?! Excuse my ignorance, but I am totally unaware of the "philosophical" theories and the like - I'm trying to think, the post mentions something about "US citizens made aware of their immortality," so I'm trying to think - was it because of it that these researchers/scientists concocted this whole TMT thing - naive as that may sound?

Because, you have entire populations of Third World countries living EVERY @ # ! * I N G DAY under the threat of terrorist attacks (maybe not of this magnitude, but still) and we had not heard anything addressing their particular concerns .. assuming, of course, that those living in those countries count as "people," from "Emperor Caligula"'s Perspective of View!

[...] Formerly, they could eat, dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel, and hear Beethoven; while millions did not eat, had no clothes or shoes, neither studied nor traveled, much less listened to Beethoven. Any restriction on this way of life, in the name of the rights of the community, appears to the former oppressors as a profound violation of their individual rights -- although they had no respect for the millions who suffered and died of hunger, pain, sorrow, and despair. For the oppressors, "human beings" refers only to themselves; other people are "things." For the oppressors, there exists only one right: their right to live in peace, over against the right, not always even recognized, but simply conceded, of the oppressed to survival. And they make this concession only because the existence of the oppressed is necessary to their own existence.

This behavior, this way of understanding the world and people (which necessarily makes the oppressors resist the installation of a new regime) is explained by their experience as a dominant class. Once a situation of violence and oppression has been established, it engenders an entire way of life and behavior for those caught up in it -- oppressors and oppressed alike. Both are submerged in this situation, and both bear the marks of oppression. Analysis of existential situations of oppression reveals that their inception lay in an act of violence -- initiated by those with power. This violence, as a process, is perpetuated from generation to generation of oppressors, who become its heirs and are shaped in its climate. This climate creates in the oppressor a strongly possessive consciousness -- possessive of the world and of men and women. Apart from direct, concrete, material possession of the world and people, the oppressor consciousness could not understand itself -- could not even exist. Fromm said of this consciousness that, without such possession, "it would lose contact with the world." The oppressor consciousness tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of its domination. The earth, property, production, the creations of people, people themselves, time -- everything is reduced to the status of objects at its disposal.

In their unrestrained eagerness to possess, the oppressors develop the conviction that it is possible for them to transform everything into objects of their purchasing power; hence their strictly materialistic concept of existence. Money is the measure of all things, and profit the primary goal. For the oppressors, what is worthwhile is to have more -- always more -- even at the cost of the oppressed having less or having nothing. For them, to be is to have and to be the class of the "haves." As beneficiaries of a situation of oppression, the oppressors cannot perceive that if having is a condition of being, it is a necessary condition for all women and men. This is why their generosity is false. Humanity is a "thing," and they possess it as an exclusive right, as inherited property. To the oppressor consciousness, the humanization of the "others," of the people, appears not as the pursuit of full humanity, but as subversion.

The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have. For them, having more is an inalienable right, a right they acquired through their own "effort," with their "courage to take risks." If others do not have more, it is because they are incompetent and lazy, and worst of all is their unjustifiable ingratitude towards the "generous gestures" of the dominant class. Precisely because they are "ungrateful" and "envious," the oppressed are regarded as potential enemies who must be watched.

It could not be otherwise. If the humanization of the oppressed signifies subversion, so also does their freedom; hence the necessity for constant control. And the more the oppressors control the oppressed, the more they change them into apparently inanimate "things." This tendency of the oppressor consciousness to "in-animate" everything and everyone it encounters, in its eagerness to possess, unquestionably corresponds with a tendency to sadism.

Sadistic love is a perverted love -- a love of death, not of life. One of the characteristics of the oppressor consciousness and its necrophilic view of the world is thus sadism. As the oppressor consciousness, in order to dominate, tries to deter to search, the restlessness, and the creative power which characterize life, it kills life. More and more, the oppressors are using science and technology as unquestionably powerful instruments for their purpose: the maintenance of the oppressive order through manipulation and repression. The oppressed, as objects, as "things," have no purposes except those their oppressors prescribe for them.

There is another post (by kaps) at the other thread recognizing such - I'm going there now.

Lov, I know where you're coming from - Marcuse developed this kind of analysis in his "One-Dimensional Man." He says hat man could avoid the fate of a Welfare-Through-Warfare State only by achieving a new starting point where he could reconstruct the productive apparatus without that "inner-worldly asceticism" which provided the mental basis for domination and exploitation.

The idea of such a new Reality Principle was based on the assumption that the material (technical) preconditions for its development were either established, or could be established, in the advanced industrial societies of our time. It was self-understood that the translation of technical capabilities into reality would mean a revolution. But the very scope and effectiveness of the democratic introjection have suppressed the historical subject, the agent of revolution: free people are not in need of liberation, and the oppressed are not strong enough to liberate themselves.

These conditions redefine the concept of Utopia: liberation is the most realistic, the most concrete of all historical possibilities and at the same time the most rationally and effectively repressed — the most abstract and remote possibility. No philosophy, no theory can undo the democratic introjection of the masters into their subjects. When, in the more or less affluent societies, productivity has reached a level at which the masses participate in its benefits, and at which the opposition is effectively and democratically "contained," then the conflict between master and slave is also effectively contained.

Or rather it has changed its social location. It exists, and explodes, in the revolt of the backward countries against the intolerable heritage of colonialism and its prolongation by neo-colonialism. The Marxian concept stipulated that only those who were free from the blessings of capitalism could possibly change it into a free society: those whose existence was the very negation of capitalist property could become the historical agents of liberation.

In the international arena, the Marxian concept regains its full validity. To the degree to which the exploitative societies have become global powers, to the degree to which the new independent nations have become the battlefield of their interests, the "external" forces of rebellion have ceased to be extraneous forces: they are the enemy within the system. This does not make these rebels the messengers of humanity. By themselves, they are not (as little as the Marxian proletariat was) the representatives of freedom. Here too, the Marxian concept applies according to which the international proletariat would get its intellectual armor from outside: the "lightning of thought" would strike the "naiven Volksboden."

The historical chance of the backward countries is in the absence of conditions which make for repressive exploitative technology and industrialization for aggressive productivity. The very fact that the affluent warfare state unleashes its annihilating power on the backward countries illuminates the magnitude of the threat. In the revolt of the backward peoples, the rich societies meet, in an elemental and brutal form, not only a social revolt in the traditional sense, but also an instinctual revolt — biological hatred.

The spread of guerilla warfare at the height of the technological century is a symbolic event: the energy of the human body rebels against intolerable repression and throws itself against the engines of repression. Perhaps the rebels know nothing about the ways of organizing a society, of constructing a socialist society; perhaps they are terrorized by their own leaders who know something about it, but the rebels' frightful existence is in total need of liberation, and their freedom is the contradiction to the overdeveloped societies.

In any event, remember Marcuse was speaking in the '60s, when the "hippies" movement - with sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll was mainly the issue of the day - so, apply appropriately and draw your own conclusions, dear fellow reader!

I'm sure you're thinking to yourself - what kind of @ # ! * i n g whore is this guy?! Just like people reacted to the NJ governor McGreevey's case - they said back then when McGreevey resigned - we would understand why a blue-collar guy would go for truckers, but someone like McGreevey?! Why wouldn't he rely on those loose social networks of white-collar gay guys who hook up at private homes and parties, who never ask their co-workers about their boyfriend when they run into a gay one during the day?! Meeting other guys at private homes, you know, where you accidentally meet your boss's boss/close co-worker who you did not even know he's gay?!

[...]

[...] I reiterate one more time that I am not surprised as to why a gay guy would want to "go for truckers," or want to @ # ! * JUST A GUY'S d i c k! I mean, think about it

bhut_jolokia, as you even say, many white-collar guys (and gals like yourself) would show up in places where you'd not expect a lot of other white-collar people to be - however, I wanted to make an observation, which I think, is critical and unique to gay men specifically:

One would have to keep in mind that many gay men go to places where they hope they would never run into another (gay) co-worker simply for the reason that they are "in the closet." Now, do not misunderstand me, I'm not trying to say that all gay men are close-minded and that they would not dignify with their physicality blue-collar guys.

What I am saying is, that in the case of the politicians that you have quoted, the former NJ Governor, McGreevey, and ex-Senator Larry Craig, it is more likely that they would consider the kind of sex they're having to be - to use now a politically-incorrect word - "below their level." (Think about what kind of conservative values they tend to hold, and how they look down on poor people, just because they're rich). They engage in sex in the manner they do simply because they are in the closet and do not want other people to know of their sexual orientation. Because of shame.

mauchly, I can give you little credit, here! Do you think McGreevey's only sexual partners were these "truckers," as you call them, that he was finding in those rest stops?!

Gay men like him have literally hundreds of partners, good and bad-looking, upper, middle, lower class, gay, bisexual, and straight - as he himself say in his book, when you engage in some kind of activity socially frowned upon, the more you try to restrict yourself from doing it, the more you do it!

Think also about the fact that he was such a powerful man, probably thinking he would be able to do a h e l l of a lot more than the simple guy down the road!

Maybe you guys think out there, that there are few others like him, who do pretty much the same thing, having had married at least a couple of times to keep the public opinion's voices a bit lower?! Then, you've got to be kidding me!

Point is, McGreevey left not because he's gay - some kind of 'extreme' gay case, by any means - but for reasons others than sexual!